Fun with Card Readers and Encoders/Writers

I received a MSR505c Card Reader/Writer in the mail today. I use and have a need to create test cards that have magstripes for a variety of purposes; The main one being a way to test/demo our issuer based products from Point-of-Sale (POS) systems and payment terminals.

I thought I create a short screencast to show how this works, which is provided below:

Some considerations to note:

It is extremely easy to "clone" a payment card using a device such as this, and the entry point from a cost and availability perspective is low (~$300 range). In a follow-up blog post, I’ll write about Maktek’s MagneSafe and MagnePrint products to detect card cloning at a magstripe level.